Good afternoon everyone, happy Friday! I was working on my Buy Miles & Points Page and found 4 offers that end in the next week. Always check the math to make sure that buying miles & points makes sense for you. Do not buy miles & points speculatively unless you have a use in mind. With that said, here are 4 offers that end soon. Up first, Air Canada is offering up to an 85% bonus, depending on the number of Air Canada Aeroplan Miles you purchase. This offer expires today – May 20.
Good afternoon everyone, I hope your week is going well. A few weeks ago, I traded in my old iPhone XS from 2018 for $700 toward a new iPhone 13 Pro. My old iPhone was in pretty good shape but the battery wasn’t holding a great charge. I heard about these trade-in deals with AT&T and Verizon so I did some research and found out how they worked. Now that I understand how these trade-in deals work, I thought I would write this post to explain the process. If you have an old iPhone or other smartphone, check with your current wireless carrier to see if they have any similar upgrade offers. Also, these deals change on a monthly basis, so check back often to see if new deals are live.
First things first, I have AT&T, so the majority of this post talks about AT&T’s trade-in program. Laura has Verizon, so I can confirm that the Verizon upgrade and trade-in process is very similar, which I will cover at the end of this post. Here are the newest iPhones available on the AT&T website and you will see the banner that says “Up to $700 w/ Trade”. The iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro are almost the same size as my old iPhone XS, so I wanted my new iPhone to be the same size. The iPhone 13 Pro has 3 cameras, a larger battery, and faster processor vs the iPhone 13 so I decided to purchase the iPhone 13 Pro.
Good afternoon everyone, I hope you had a great weekend. One of my travel hacking / miles and points goals this year is to simplify my life and use less card-linked / reward apps that track all my purchases. I have “used” Drop for several years. And by “used” I mean I created an account, linked all my cards to it, and waited for the rewards to roll in. Over the years, I seem to earn less and less points with Drop and now my points are barely trickling into my account. Drop introduced Drop Premium which gives you 1,000 points per month just for being a member and claiming the points. I’m convinced this is a tactic used by Drop to keep members active. If you want to redeem your Drop points for a gift card, you need to have a minimum of 25,000 points. I believe it used to be 10,000 points for a $10 gift card, but Drop got rid of that redemption option (to increase orphaned points in the accounts and reduce gift card expenses).
Long story short, I was about 7,000 points short of my 25,000 point goal to redeem my points for a $25 gift card. Conveniently, Drop introduced a Top-Up feature where you can buy points. I decided to buy 7,000 points for $9 in order to redeem my 25,000 points for a $25 gift card. That seemed like a decent deal to me. I will show you some of the roadblocks I went through and how I closed my Drop account at the end of this post.
I didn’t take screenshots before I bought the points, but this is what my account looked like after I used the Top-Up feature. I have had that 20,000 point referral bonus sitting there for months, so I doubt those points will ever come (this might be another tactic Drop uses to keep members around). In the Points History section, you can see I bought 7,000 points on May 7 and received 1,000 points each month I opened the app and claimed the points. It looks like I forgot to open the app between January 10 and April 6 since I didn’t get any points during that period.
Good afternoon everyone, I hope your weekend is going well. A few days ago, I got this letter from Barclays regarding the $95 annual fee on Barclays Wyndham Rewards Earner Business Credit Card. Apparently Barclays did not charge me the $95 annual fee when they should have in December 2021, so to correct this issue, they charged me the $95 annual fee in April 2022. So much for bank error in your favor (Monopoly reference). I’m not sure if this is a widespread issue or if it only happened to me. In this post, I will share the timeline of events.
Good afternoon everyone, happy Friday! If you are not busy tomorrow, Saturday May 14, I highly recommend attending the FTU Virtual Seminar (tickets available for $25) or free if you have the FTU Online Annual Membership. The seminar starts on Saturday, May 14 at 8am PT / 11am ET. I have attended all of the FTU Virtual Seminars over the last 2 years and they are always well done, educational, and entertaining – and I am sure this seminar will be no exception! Here is the full schedule and lineup of speakers:
